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The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) is pushing ahead with its fund liquidity review, launching a Common Supervisory Action (CSA) with national competent authorities (NCAs) to look at UCITS managers liquidity risk management.
The launch of the CSA was widely expected after ESMA chair, Steven Maijoor, outlined the regulator’s focus on UCITS liquidity risks in November last year, indicating that a supervisory action was likely in 2020.In a press release on 30 January, ESMA said that ‘NCAs agreed to assess… whether market participants in their jurisdictions adhere to the rules in their day-to-day business. This will be done on the basis of a common methodology developed together ESMA.’The first stage will involve NCAs requesting quantitative data from a large majority of the UCITS managers to get an overview of the supervisory risks faced. NCAs will then focus on a sample of UCITS managers to carry out more in-depth supervisory analyses, the regulator said.NCAs will apparently then share their findings, via ESMA, throughout the year.Separately, ESMA also released a statement reminding UK entities of their governance and reporting obligations from 1 February 2020, after the UK exits the EU. It emphasised that:
- EU law will continue to apply to the UK entities during the transition period from 1 February to 31 December 2020
- Rights and obligations for UK entities under EU law will continue to apply. This includes reporting and notification obligations under MiFID II/MiFIR, EMIR, CSDR, AIFMD, MMFR
- ESMA will continue to directly supervise registered Credit Rating Agencies, Trade Repositories and Securitisation Repositories established in the UK during this period.
In addition, the European regulator will continue monitoring the application of EU law in the UK, and will closely monitor developments in preparation for the end of the transition period.